It becomes clear that the future home of Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles will be Bremen. Starting with the new production version of the EQ concept, Mercedes will build not only this electric SUV in the German city that those fabled town musicians were trying to get to, but also an "entire range of intelligent drive technologies." Look for the first vehicles to roll out by the end of the decade. Looking further out, the expanded plan is to have 10 electric Benz models for sale by 2025, built in various plants around the world.
We think that the Bremen production announcement will fit in with Mercedes' attempt to reduce electric vehicle spending costs. Mercedes' overall corporate strategy for its future mobility products is now called CASE, which stands for "Connected, Autonomous, Shared & Services and Electric Drive." The end result of all this plug-in drive work is, that electric cars will make up between 15 percent and 25 percent of the company's sales by 2025. This includes expanded EV sales in places like China.
Mercedes' Bremen plant currently builds vehicles with conventional combustion engines, as well as plug-in hybrid versions of the C-Class and the GLC. Alongside the EQ, Mercedes-Benz will build the plug-in hybrid hydrogen fuel cell GLC F-CELL there. That car is due in 2017. The EQ's lithium-ion battery - and, in fact, all Mercedes and Smart li-ion batteries - will also be made in Germany, in Kamenz by the Daimler subsidiary Accumotive. Battery production will start there in 2018.
